Plant-based & thriving! - OLYMPIC STARS' NO-MEAT MESSAGE

Luuka and Brooke prove you can be vegetarian and still bring home the medals

- Kasia Jillings

 They're world-class athletes who've T both taken home silver medals at the Olympics, but that's not all Luuka Jones and Brooke Francis (née Donoghue) have in common.

The Rotorua friends are also vegetarians who are passionate about proving it's possible to be an elite athlete without eating meat.

Together, with nutritionist Christel Dunshea-Mooij, Luuka and Brooke have combined their personal experiences and knowledge to write Sustain, a plant-based cookbook for athletes and active people.

"The myth is, it's not possible to be a high-performance athlete and not eat meat. But it's definitely possible," enthuses Christel, 53, who stresses it's all about ensuring calories and nutrients are properly replaced.

For canoe slalom paddler Luuka, who won silver at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, it was adopting pet chickens that inspired her to start following a plant-based lifestyle four years ago.

"I couldn't imagine my pet chickens being raised in a cage purely for consumption and it made me think quite deeply about my food choices," says Luuka, 33, who admits she was initially hesitant about giving up meat.

"I'd been wanting to switch, but there wasn't a lot of information specific to athletes. One of our slalom champions famously ate a steak every day, and I grew up believing in order to get enough protein and iron, I had to consume meat. But that's absolutely not the case."

Rower Brooke had similar concerns, especially as an initial attempt to go vegetarian as a teen wasn't successful her sporting performance suffered and she decided to eat meat again.

But by 2018, eating meat still didn't sit well with her.